5 ms·

Australia's indigenous solution for bushfires. It's been around for 50k years

11 points by sogen 7y ago

aaron695 7y ago
Even if you want to buy into the mysticism that indigenous people somehow have a magically quality to them that mean they can beat modern science with it's satellites, thermal imaging, high speed computers and databases and simulations. You still get stuck with their magic is from 200 years ago, which if you want to believe either climate change or the induced foreign species has fundamentally changed the under growth and as such the magic no longer applies. But I guess if you're into the quite racist idea they have magic this wouldn't matter because once you have magic you can do anything. Except perhaps think indigenous people are like us and can become lawyers and IT nerds and even have science based climate jobs.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  I didn't see any magic natives in the article - just an acknowledgement that they've been living in Australia for 50 thousand years, so have built up a lot of knowledge about how to interact with the indigenous species.
  - shard972 7y ago
    But they have no written language and their spoken languages are incredibly diverse. How was this knowledge passed down and preserved?
- pstuart 7y ago
  mysticism? magic? It was never implied in the article; what was implied that they had a more successful approach to doing controlled burns. And to the other side of your equation, "modern science" conquering nature is a mode of thought that has not served us well in many cases. This isn't to reject science (ever!), it's that hubris is best avoided.
Smoosh 7y ago
As the article itself says (contradicting the implications of the headline), fire management practices based upon those of aboriginals have indeed been adopted. The problems are that (1) Aboriginal practitioners of these techniques did not have to take into account the risk and impact upon houses, farms, towns and interruptions to peoples lives; and (2) with the effects of climate change, there is now almost never a good time to perform hazard reduction burn operations, and certainly not long enough periods to cover the huge areas at risk. I would agree that increasing the applicable manpower and budget (as noted in the article) would certainly help, and should be given a higher priority.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  1) their burns are smaller, cooler and intensively managed. 2) The people who do it would disagree. People have been employing consultants to use traditional techniques around their properties, and they've been working, and haven't seen them blamed for any out of control fires.

11 points by sogen 7y ago

Even if you want to buy into the mysticism that indigenous people somehow have a magically quality to them that mean they can beat modern science with it's satellites, thermal imaging, high speed computers and databases and simulations. You still get stuck with their magic is from 200 years ago, which if you want to believe either climate change or the induced foreign species has fundamentally changed the under growth and as such the magic no longer applies. But I guess if you're into the quite racist idea they have magic this wouldn't matter because once you have magic you can do anything. Except perhaps think indigenous people are like us and can become lawyers and IT nerds and even have science based climate jobs.

EdwardDiego 7y ago
I didn't see any magic natives in the article - just an acknowledgement that they've been living in Australia for 50 thousand years, so have built up a lot of knowledge about how to interact with the indigenous species.
- shard972 7y ago
  But they have no written language and their spoken languages are incredibly diverse. How was this knowledge passed down and preserved?
pstuart 7y ago
mysticism? magic? It was never implied in the article; what was implied that they had a more successful approach to doing controlled burns. And to the other side of your equation, "modern science" conquering nature is a mode of thought that has not served us well in many cases. This isn't to reject science (ever!), it's that hubris is best avoided.

Smoosh 7y ago

As the article itself says (contradicting the implications of the headline), fire management practices based upon those of aboriginals have indeed been adopted. The problems are that (1) Aboriginal practitioners of these techniques did not have to take into account the risk and impact upon houses, farms, towns and interruptions to peoples lives; and (2) with the effects of climate change, there is now almost never a good time to perform hazard reduction burn operations, and certainly not long enough periods to cover the huge areas at risk. I would agree that increasing the applicable manpower and budget (as noted in the article) would certainly help, and should be given a higher priority.

EdwardDiego 7y ago
1) their burns are smaller, cooler and intensively managed. 2) The people who do it would disagree. People have been employing consultants to use traditional techniques around their properties, and they've been working, and haven't seen them blamed for any out of control fires.